Borya: The Dog Who Asked Soldiers for Help

When Borya could no longer survive alone, he walked to the people he thought might help him. He found a group of frontline Ukrainian soldiers.

They took one look at him and knew he was in serious trouble. This pit bull, whom they named Borya, was starving, his body wasted down to just sixteen kilograms. One of his ears and one of his eyes were severely infected. The damage was so advanced that the tissue was, quite literally, rotting. The soldiers, already living in the hardest of conditions, did the one thing they could. They reached out for help.

That call reached Irina, part of the ROLDA Rescue Team network, and on 19 March, the long fight to save Borya’s life began.

He was too weak and too sick for any quick solution. The first priority was simply to keep him alive, to stabilise him and bring his raging infection under control. Only once he was strong enough could he face the first of his surgeries.

In that first operation, the surgeons removed the dead tissue and damaged cartilage that the infection had destroyed. They fought to save his eye, but the damage had gone too far. Borya has permanently lost sight in that eye. It looks far better now than it did, but the vision cannot come back.

The ear was worse. Despite everything, the infection kept advancing, the tissue continuing to break down. In the end, the team faced a hard decision, and they made the one that would save his life. The ear was fully amputated, along with the ear canal.

None of this has been quick, and none of it has been easy. Borya’s treatment is still ongoing. He is still healing, and every day he keeps fighting.

But think about where he began. A starving, rotting, half-blind dog, abandoned to his fate, who somehow found the strength and the trust to walk up to a group of human beings and ask for help. That trust was not misplaced. The soldiers answered. ROLDA answered. And because of supporters like you, Borya is not facing his recovery alone.

He has lost an eye and an ear. But he has kept the one thing that saved him in the first place: his will to live, and his belief that people would not let him down.

Thank you for being one of the people who proved him right.